


to the prisoner behind the wall

by prosodiical



Category: Presentable Liberty
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baking, Fix-It, Multi, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-20 22:59:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14271396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: Charlotte's gramophone has a battery, and there are still a few minutes left. The music brings a stranger to her bakery door.





	to the prisoner behind the wall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Piinutbutter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/gifts).



> Thanks to thinkatory for the beta! All remaining errors are my own.

_I'm so lonely,_ Charlotte writes, and, feeling lost, sets her pen down. She crumples the letter, and adds it to the pile quickly growing in the trash.

There's no easy way to set it to paper. She'd bake, in a better world; pull out her gramophone and sway to the music as it drowned out the world outside and she stirred cake batter by hand for the sheer physical joy of it, seeing eggs and flour and milk and sugar come together into something more. Or she'd decorate: losing herself in the flourish of piping delicate swirls and molding flowers petal by petal, leaf by careful leaf. 

Electricity's been the latest thing to go. There were no announcements, this time; no one sent out mail or came to her door. Her oven still works - the gas lines are still, for the moment, turned on - but the silence is vast and empty and the small battery in Charlotte's gramophone has nearly run dry.

Though — she's been keeping it for a rainy day. She's not expecting many more of those.

The letter she leaves for later, the paper unfolded, the envelope unsealed. Her kitchen's small and well-appointed for the space, with beautifully pale, gleaming counters she ran her hands over when she first had them installed, daydreaming of a future with cakes in the window and pastries pulled fresh from the oven. "One more," she says to herself, her voice feeling foreign to her ears. When was the last time she talked to someone? When was the last time she had any human contact at all, apart from the letters she sends to someone who might not even exist, who in her imagination is just as lonely as she is?

A cake, she reminds herself. Her little pot growing strawberries on the windowsill has only a handful left, but it's enough for this.

Charlotte only sets up her gramophone once the ingredients are all laid out, the last remnants of butter from her icebox and flour beside powdered milk. Something like a chill goes down her spine when she sets the needle to vinyl for one last spin, alongside a memory of the last time she'd done the same; she'd hoped the prisoner was listening, then. She isn't sure if she wishes they were now.

She knows nothing about them, except that they just might be the only other person alive in this town, this city, this - 

There's a sound that isn't her music, rich and warm like it's being played in just another room. There's a sound that isn't her mixing spoon against the side of the bowl. Charlotte stills, wondering - a bird, a cat? - and it rings out, again. It sounds like someone is knocking on her bakery door.

Slowly, she puts the bowl down. She approaches the door to the front area of the store carefully, her steps feeling loud in the swell of her record playing, a structured triple-beat that might be a fist against glass. The door opens under her fingertips, hinges creaking, and Charlotte brings her gaze up from the floor.

When she meets his eyes, she can't help the gasp that escapes her: too startled, too aching, too loud. It's him, she thinks wildly, but he looks on her with none of the familiarity she would have expected as he reaches down and tries the handle to the bakery door.

It's locked, of course. Charlotte crosses the room with her legs trembling to hold her weight, and only remembers the virus once she's opened it.

Well. She thought she was alone.

"Hello," he says, oddly gentle. "I heard your music from the street; I hadn't thought anyone else was here. I'm Salvadore."

"Charlotte," she says, and feels herself set a steadying hand on the wall. "Are you... infected?"

"I'm unaware of the details, I'm afraid," he says, "as I only arrived here this morning. I could be. Are you?"

"No," she says. "But everyone else has..."

She can't finish. She doesn't think she needs to, from his steadily falling expression. Instead, she says, "Would you like to come inside?"

Her cake, she remembers then, as he follows her carefully through the door. He looks around the front of her bakery with curiosity and Charlotte was thinking of making it for her lost prisoner, of setting it in the window soaked in alcohol and covered in fondant with all her hopes inside - but there's a real person, here, now. He says, "This used to be my hometown, but I remember this store being closed."

"I bought it recently," Charlotte admits, and gestures him on.

"Ah! And your lovely music." He leans over to examine her gramophone, the spin of its turntable starting to slow, and Charlotte checks on her half-made batter. She can probably scrounge up enough water for tea. "When I heard this I almost thought I was dreaming. This town... it's become so empty. So different."

"But you're still here," Charlotte says, and he glances at her curiously.

"Yes," he says. "But so are you."

Charlotte can't say, _I have nowhere else to go._ She thinks of the prisoner she writes letters to, her only contact in this lonely broken world, and Salvadore's mouth twists in a faint grimace as he sighs. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean it as an accusation. I... have a purpose here."

"A purpose?" she echoes.

He pauses. "A friend."

Her hand stills on the kettle's handle. An odd, unfamiliar hope springs in her chest. "There's no one here," she says, "at least, not... safe, after what happened today. Even Dr Money's letters have been slowing."

"Not in town, precisely," Salvadore says, "but in prison. Oh, I don't mean to worry you," he adds, to whatever he reads in her expression, "I am fairly sure he is not guilty of whatever he has been charged with; we have known each other for years. I admit, I do not know if he still lives, but my letters have all been taken and never returned."

Charlotte's heart feels stuck in her throat. "Mine, too."

She can see the moment it registers, the wash of confused delight over his face. "You have been writing him, as well?"

"I was told - " Charlotte stops, sorting her thoughts into words. "They said he was the only one still uninfected, in this town. Apart from me."

"Then he could still live," Salvadore says, with a new spark of enthusiasm Charlotte feels wash over her like the forgotten lightness in her chest. "I had hoped, but... I have been sending him parts of a table I have been carving on my travels. I think even if my letters were going nowhere they would return."

"I sent him a cake," Charlotte confesses, and he smiles at her, a secret shared. There's a growing warmth in her chest not entirely the relief of finding someone - here, alive, unsullied by the town - but of finding someone she just might like. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

"Please," he says, and takes a seat at the table at the corner, with its two matching chairs. Charlotte had imagined the prisoner visiting her there, often; she would daydream with her elbows on the table, a cup of tea at hand, and think of the things she would bake. "And if I interrupted your work - "

Charlotte shakes her head. "I was just making another cake," she says. "...But if you don't mind waiting a few hours, I'm sure we can take a few pieces."

"I only have one place to be." Salvadore takes the kettle from her, filling the teapot with a steady hand. "It will be better done in the morning, I think. Then I will rescue my friend."

He says it with a determination Charlotte envies, but the smile he gives her is conspiratorial and pleased. Suddenly, he's a handsome man sitting in her kitchen, and she hides the warmth rising in her face by turning back to her cake batter and spoon.

But while he might be content with the silence, Charlotte can't bring herself to forget just how momentary this might be. "Do you have a place to stay tonight?" she asks, carefully folding flour into her bowl. "Since they turned off the electricity, it gets quite dark."

"I have become accustomed to sleeping under the stars," he says, nursing his teacup. Her crockery is delicate, matching china covered in flowers she purchased for the store. She doesn't remember using it before. "And there seem to be enough abandoned apartments - "

"No, I mean," Charlotte starts, "would you like one? With the virus - it might not be safe outside."

"If I will not be intruding - "

"No," she says, and repeats it more firmly. "No, it's fine. We share a friend, don't we? And I... I haven't had anyone here in a while."

"In that case," he says, "thank you."

He studies her for a moment under sharp, dark brows, more thoughtful than piercing, but Charlotte feels stripped bare by it anyway. She bites her lip as she nears him again, leaning over the table to pluck a few strawberries from her pot, and he says, then: "We do share a friend, don't we? But I fathom he has not told you much about either of us."

Charlotte opens her mouth, closes it. Salvadore holds up a hand.

"All for the best," he says, "as I would hate for you to get tales coloured by his well-edited view. You'd never hear of the time he almost set our tent alight."

She can tell what he's doing; the easy cadence of his voice filling the space where the gramophone's scratchy tune has faded. She finds herself smiling anyway, unable to ignore the warmth bubbling in her chest. "What happened?"

He launches into the tale with a nostalgic familiarity that makes her think he's told it at least a dozen times before. She imagines the prisoner was there, too: interjecting at parts where Salvadore pauses, offering his own version of events that doesn't have him frantically batting out a fire in only his underwear as Salvadore peers at him lethargically from the tent. Charlotte pours the cake batter into the tin, sets her battery-powered timer, and puts it in the oven. She's still smiling when she joins him at the table, and tries not to pay too much attention to the flourish of Salvadore's fingers as he wraps his story up.

"Of course," he adds, "I'm sure he'd tell you the time we went out fishing in retaliation. I don't come out well from that one, I'm afraid."

Charlotte's tea isn't that warm, but she sips at it anyway, curving her hands around the sides. "Will you only tell the times you come out ahead?"

"A little competition in a friendship is only natural," he says, "as my friend would say. But you must have some of your own collegiate mishaps to share."

Startled, Charlotte surprises herself with a laugh. "I feel like I've lived a very quiet life next to you."

"Most of life is quiet, I've found," Salvadore says. "We find things to keep us busy. I took up whittling again. And you..."

"Baking?" Charlotte suggests, and his smile widens.

"Yes, though you've made a profession of it. What made you start?"

He looks as though he actually wants to know. Charlotte can't remember the last time someone did.

It's half an hour before Charlotte takes the cake out of the oven, and while she's there she refills her kettle and sets it again to boil. She puts the cake on a rack to cool while Salvadore says, "That smells wonderful - however do you do it? I'm barely able to feed myself."

"Practice," she says, "and a little luck."

"Ah, that must be what I've been missing," Salvadore says, and Charlotte feels a blush rise to her face as she laughs.

When the cake has cooled enough to cut and decorate, Charlotte busies herself with mixing icing and Salvadore asks her for paper and pen. The letter she had been about to write seems miles away right now, and Charlotte's suddenly, acutely aware of what such a thing would look like to this man, to his friend. The echoing void of emptiness inside her has been quieted, and yet she isn't sure if it would return without the sound of Salvadore scratching out a letter on her stationery, eyebrows furrowed in thought; without the presence of someone - anyone - that might care.

She thinks, perhaps, the prisoner would. Salvadore's life is twisted with his like a braided dough, and the silhouette he paints is of someone very much like him.

"Would you like to add a few words?" Salvadore holds up her pen.

When she takes it from him, their fingers brush. Charlotte's breath catches at the touch.

 _Tomorrow_ , she writes, to the end of Salvadore's letter. _I'm looking forward to finally meeting you._

The sealed envelope goes into her postbox, and she wonders if she should have mentioned the cake. Salvadore pours them both tea as she sets her knife at the edge of the cake, pristine and picture-perfect like she'd always dreamed.

She can't keep waiting for a future that might never come. She cuts them both a slice.

Salvadore sends two more letters as evening falls, though Charlotte doesn't read what he writes. The fading sunlight casts the street outside in beautiful colours when she returns to the front room, the dried red of blood hidden in the fire-like orange and reds as the sun dips below the horizon. Her bakery isn't large - this front room, the kitchen, the storage room she turned into a makeshift bedroom - but lately it's felt bigger than it should, silent and empty and closed. 

She rescues a cushion and blanket from the space near her desk, and doesn't think of the gun still sitting in the drawer.

It should probably be awkward, sharing a pile of blankets on the floor with someone she's known only a day. But she's already insisted it's fine, and when their elbows brush as he shifts she wonders if she was hoping for something more. "I'm sorry," she confesses to the dark; he's a living breathing presence by her side and when he takes her hand, she feels unmoored, almost surprised she's still alive. 

Salvadore says, "Don't be. If we had not met today, it would be another, I think. My friend would not have left you here alone."

Charlotte's voice sticks in her throat. A few hours either way, and everything would be different. And yet..."You're going to get him out tomorrow?"

She's shown him the prison lights from the bakery window. They're the only lights on, now; a strangely bright ship floating in the sea of darkness that's inexorably taken over the town. Salvadore shifts in a rustle of fabric and gently, squeezes her hand. "Yes," he says. "I believe I might have some ideas. Will you join me?"

"I don't think I'd be much help."

"But I know he would be happy to see you."

Charlotte can barely see him in the dark. There's the curve of his jaw, there, the set of his eyes. His hand against hers is solid and firm, a skin-to-skin touch that fills her with warmth from the inside out. She thinks about kissing him, but - no, not yet. "I won't be able to bring the cake."

"We can come back," he says. She can hear his smile. "I haven't yet caught sight of this singular Dr Money - and you haven't recently, have you?"

"No," she admits. Not since the morning, a rush of stragglers and unfortunate surgical patients succumbing to the virus, the streets awash with their blood. She wrote a letter to the prisoner then, she remembers; it feels so long ago. She never did finish the last few.

"Your bakery is yet untouched," Salvadore says, "and you have a back door, in case I am wrong. But I think we will be safe for one more night."

"Tomorrow, then," Charlotte says, and it feels like stepping out again into the world.

 

Salvadore writes again to his friend in the morning on a sheet of Charlotte's paper, mailed from her bakery's postbox. There's another box by the prison's wall, and he sends along updates as they go. "This doesn't seem much like a prison," he says, and tests the latches on the windows, and once they're inside, the locks on all the doors. "Perhaps... a way for him to get down..."

Charlotte says, "These locks are electric, aren't they?" and his eyes light up as he comes to a solution that just might work.

She jerks him away from the generator as soon as it sparks, and they watch with a breathless anticipation as the lights shut off, all at once. A moment later, though, and she can hear a low hum through the walls as the lights on an emergency circuit switch on. They're low-power red, like a warning, like blood - and Charlotte's heart is racing as she looks at Salvadore in the thin light, seeing the worry etched in his frown.

"I don't know," he starts, and then they both hear it: an alien rumbling coming from high above.

Salvadore had suggested his friend was imprisoned in one of the rooms there, inaccessible from the ground floor. They leave the generator for the door as the noise seems to come closer - 

"The elevator?" Salvadore suggests, and Charlotte says, breathlessly, "Let's go."

The buttons hadn't worked before. Now, there's a faint light above the elevator door: a number, counting down, slow enough for Charlotte's brief spate of enthusiasm entirely leave her for nerves. "Did he even get any of my letters?"

Salvadore's smile is reassuring. "You don't need to worry," he says. "Even if he didn't, you can tell him what you wrote. And your cake is good enough to win anyone over."

It brings a smile to her face, at least. And then the rumble of the elevator stops.

The doors open. Her friend is smaller than she had thought, and there's a gauntness to his face that speaks of time malnourished. She abruptly wishes she'd made more than just a treat, that she had the ingredients for luxurious breads and delicate pastries with savory fillings to slowly but surely put some flesh onto his bones. And she wishes she had something to say, but it's okay; he exclaims, "Charlotte!" and when she takes a trembling step forward, he sweeps her into his arms.

He's steady and warm and Charlotte can't remember the last time she hugged someone, even before. She slips her hands around him and exhales the last of her worry into the shoulder of his shirt, and she's smiling harder than she means to. He tips his head and she lifts hers and meeting his eyes feels like coming home.

And he doesn't let go, even when he notices Salvadore there. "Sal," he says, his voice rumbling against Charlotte's ear, and she squeezes him tight and makes to step back but he reels her back in, his left hand on her wrist. "Even when I got your letters, I'd thought..."

"It's good to see you again, my friend," Salvadore says, oddly grave, and takes his friend's palm in his.

"I hope it didn't disturb your travels too much."

"You know I was already on my way back home." 

Salvadore sets a hand on Charlotte's shoulder, and she looks between them. She can't seem to stop smiling. "I invited you for tea," she says. "And there's cake left, at my bakery."

"I'll take you up on that," her friend says. "Though you better not have let Sal eat it all."

There's not much light left in the day, but they spend it with tea and Charlotte's makeshift cake. She does get to hear the fishing incident and a dozen more besides, the two friends talking over one another as she laughs. And when the sun sinks below the horizon and there's nothing to do but wait for the next day, Salvadore brings up traveling again. "I did rather enjoy it," he muses, "though it would be vastly improved with friends."

"You're just looking for an excuse to sign your letters 'Salvadore the traveler' again," his friend accuses, and turns his smile on Charlotte. "What do you think?"

Her table didn't have enough chairs, so they're sitting on the floor, cushions pulled together and crumb-covered plates on the side. Their knees are bumping, and he hasn't let go of her hand this whole time.

Charlotte's poured time and love and life into her bakery, but she's not sure anymore if she'll ever forget the people outside. She's not sure if she'll ever forget the gun in her desk-drawer, or the time she took it out and weighed it in her palm. Tonight she'll spend curled up with the both of them on her makeshift bed and perhaps she'll kiss him, then; perhaps she'll kiss both of them, and with the way they look at each other, it might just be the push into something more.

She's already the happiest she can remember, here with them. Perhaps it's time to let some things go.

"All right," she says, resolved. "Where are we going?"

**Author's Note:**

> All mailboxes are now magical portal dimensions that teleport letters immediately to the person they're addressed to.
> 
> I picked up this canon from your letter and really enjoyed it, so thank you! I hope you like this little coda to the game :)


End file.
